New Route to Hydrocarbon Biofuels

Technology Review by MIT
Monday, September 22, 2008
By Prachi Patel

A simple catalytic process converts plant sugars into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a simple, two-step chemical process to convert plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuels. The compounds created during the process could also be used to make other industrial chemicals and plastics.

Several companies are making hydrocarbon biofuels--which can be cheaper to produce than ethanol and have higher energy density--using microbes. Startups such as LS9 and Amyris are trying to genetically engineer the metabolic systems of microbes so that they ferment sugars into useful hydrocarbons.

The Wisconsin researchers, led by chemical- and biological-engineering professor James Dumesic, employ chemical reactions instead of microbial fermentation. They use catalysts at high temperatures to convert glucose into hydrocarbon biofuels. The process works thousands of times faster than microbes do because of the higher temperatures, so it requires smaller, cheaper reactors, Dumesic says. The catalysts and reformer systems that they use are similar to those used in oil refineries, which would also make the process simpler.

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